


The Artist and The Muse

by CollingwoodGirl



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Art, Body Worship, Established Relationship, Exploration, F/M, Freedom, Inspired by Art, Painting, Portraits, Taking Risks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:06:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CollingwoodGirl/pseuds/CollingwoodGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drinking in the eloquence of the charcoal lines, the finesse of the chalk as it casts a glow over the lithe nude figure, her fingers dart forward. She wants to see him through the eyes of this artist, to trace that familiar landscape in a completely unfamiliar way, to imagine herself as the one who rendered the very essence of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Artist and The Muse

**Author's Note:**

> _Art is not what you see, but what you make others see._ —Edgar Degas  
>   
> 
> I have taken a great deal of liberty with my small but integral cast of historical characters – though I have done my level best to line up the fictitious timelines with actual events. I mean to cast no aspersions on their legacy, but hopefully, they will find a bit of a resurgence in popularity among MFMM fans.
> 
> As always, constructive criticisms and comments are deeply appreciated.

 

**JANUARY 1930**

 

MET UP WITH AN OLD FRIEND (STOP) NOT THAT KIND (STOP) ASKED ME TO MODEL ONE LAST TIME (STOP) EXHILARATING TO BE PART OF THE ART WORLD AGAIN (STOP) YOU SHOULD TRY IT SOMETIME (STOP) DUNCAN AND I THINK YOU’D MAKE AN ARRESTING SUBJECT (STOP) DON’T FORGET 6TH FEBRUARY (END TRANSMISSION)

 

NO TIME TO PONDER MY ARTISTIC MERIT HOWEVER UNLIKELY BUT THERE IS NO DOUBT OF YOURS (STOP) COMMISSIONED FOR A FORTNIGHT TO SA (STOP) REACHABLE AT LOWER NORTH ADELAIDE POLICE STATION (STOP) 6 FEB AS IF I COULD FORGET (STOP) MEET YOU AT THE AIRFIELD (STOP) I’LL BE THE ONE IN THE HAT (END TRANSMISSION)

 

 

 

******************************

 

 

 

**SPRING 1934**

 

The shrill bleating of the phone cuts through the studied silence of his office, where he and Miss Fisher are methodically sifting through the circumstantial flotsam and jetsam currently spread across his desk.

“Detective Superintendent Robinson,” he announces in a voice sharp with authority – the one designed to separate the wheat from the chaff, knowing he can’t afford the distraction. His eyes don’t miss the way his fellow detective’s lips press hungrily together at the tone, sparks of desire and pride alighting in her crystal blue eyes.

“Inspector!” a warm, broad voice exclaims. “Oh!” A laugh bubbles up in the woman’s throat before she clears her throat.

“Excuse me, but—”

“Forgive me… I’m obviously disturbing you. It’s Nora. Nora Heysen.” The precocious young woman senses his discomfit and adds, “The sketch artist… from Adelaide?”

His hand flies to shield his eyes from the prying gaze of Miss Fisher as the memory sorts itself. “Yes. Yes, of course.” His fingertips work to smooth down knitted brows as he swallows deeply, recalling his last foray with the talented girl some four years ago. “Ah… Is everything…alright?”

“Wonderful, actually, Inspector,” she breathes, once again using the title he had held when she first met him. “I’m so glad I was able to reach you. I’m traveling with my parents to the Continent.” She talks for a moment about her schooling, her studio, and her exhibition – catching up the passing years as if they were merely weeks.

“That’s… ah… I mean to say… I’m, uh, happy for your success, Miss Heysen. But I fail to understand what any of this has to do with me.”

“Well, you see, I am rather limited in what I can take with me. I’ve been rather fortunate to have sold quite a few pieces to galleries and private collectors.”

Jack can’t help but feel he’s missing something in this conversation as her silence stretches out uncomfortably over the wires.

“But I have one…” she continues at long last, “I promised I would never sell it… and I can’t be certain I can safeguard it during the journey. I’ll be travelling through from Sydney on the twenty-first and I thought—”

“Oh— _Oh_.” He can feel the flush creeping up his chest and senses Phryne edging forward in her chair, intrigued at the half of the conversation she is able to hear.

“Would you consider… keeping it for me, Inspector Robinson? Until I return?”

He shuts his eyes, the potential consequences unfurling in wisps of white smoke in the darkness that meets him. It was not as if he had a choice – liberal-minded as he may be, he is not Phryne Fisher.

“Of course I will.” His voice is rougher than he would like, but the promise is made soberly. He pencils the date and the name of her vessel into the little black notebook that is his constant companion and stuffs it down into his coat’s breast pocket.

After a few more pleasantries, he bids the caller a safe journey and hangs up the receiver – finally meeting Phryne’s sparkling eyes.

“Long lost evidence, Jack?”

He clears his throat and presses his palms to his desk. “Something like that, Miss Fisher. Something like that.”

Within the deep grey pools of his eyes, she spots the devil in him – though his expression begs her to let it be for the moment.

“You know I like a mystery,” she purrs, crossing her legs and squeezing her thighs together to encourage the thrum that pulses through her body.

Armed with the challenge, she resumes sorting through the files of their latest case – something she can hope to solve anytime soon. Unraveling Jack Robinson, she knows, is the work of a lifetime.

 

 

******************************

 

 

He places the parcel gingerly upon his breakfast table – doffing his hat to rest beside it – and takes the six long strides to the cupboard to unearth an ancient bottle of whiskey and a dusty glass.

Jack frowns at the brown paper and string before downing the drink in one go.

He wants to open it. He doesn’t want to open it.

Instead, he wrangles out of his topcoat – letting it spill messily across the back of a wooden chair rather than hang on its appointed hook – and pours another generous measure.

He is nervous, he realizes, rubbing the twine she used to secure the wrappings between his fingers. The roughness of it grounds him.

He has never seen it. And it doesn’t feel right to do so in – of all places – the kitchen of his underutilized flat. Muttering to himself about the absurdity of the situation, he grabs up his drink and the package and heads for his study.

Despite that many of his beloved volumes have since found their way to The Esplanade to mingle with Miss Fisher’s, he calms. That knowledge may be sought and found within these walls has always held the power to steady him. The whiskey doesn’t hurt either.

 

 

******************************

 

 

The strange telephone call was far from forgotten when Jack had announced that he had some personal business to attend to and, with regret, could not join her for supper. There was really very little she could do but don her break and enter beret, pull a richly embroidered black coat over her shoulders and leave word with Mr. Butler not to wait up.

Absorbed by what he has seen, Jack doesn’t hear the lock turn in its tumbler.

 _He’s here_ , she thinks. The scent of wool and ink and spirits is heavy in the air as she steps lightly through his parlour, not wishing to startle, but knowing all the same that some part of him expects her to come.

A shaft of amber light guides her through Jack’s otherwise dark lodgings to the library where he sits in a familiar leather chair, his cuffs rolled, his tie loosened, his waves askew where his hands have raked them free.

When he turns, his expression is a curious mix of bewilderment and chagrin, and his tongue darts out to wet his dry lips. He looks utterly ravishable – and irritatingly unfazed to find her there. Her lips twist as she crosses the room to weave her fingers into his hair. She tugs gently, tipping his head backward so she can deliver a decadent kiss.

“Hello Jack,” she whispers, her longer hair draping their faces in a cocoon of jasmine-scented twilight. “You really do need a better bolt on that door. Were you expecting me?”

He smiles against her, his incisor edging the helix of her ear. “I learned long ago never to assume anything where you’re concerned, Miss Fisher.”

“Wise,” she murmurs, sucking his tongue back into her mouth. He is distracted, his hands unsure as they flit beneath her coat to hold her steady while she leans over him. Satisfied that he tastes nothing of another woman – not that she had truly expected him to – she is disconcerted all the same.

“You declined my supper invitation for an evening of solitude then?” her voice straying into the octave that belies her nonchalance.

He cannot hope to keep it from her for long, but he is enjoying the moment too much not to try. He stands and pulls her close, his hand settling heavily in the small of her back.

“Not quite,” he teases, slipping a lock of hair behind her ear with his middle finger. “I had to collect something down at the port… For a friend.”

“Miss Heysen, I believe, was your friend’s name.”

Phryne has never had a taste for jealousy and so she strains to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She is not entirely successful and, spying the remains of his whiskey, leaves the glass with only a waxy red smudge in her wake.

Jack, who knows all too well the particular flavour of the green-eyed monster, makes no attempt to hide the smirk which blooms along his lips at her uncharacteristic solicitousness.  

“Yes, that’s right.” His eyes glitter with amusement.

“An unusual surname. Any relation to Hans Heysen?”

“Ah, yes… Her father.” he stumbles, the smugness dropping from his features like a stone. Ridiculous – how often he allows himself to forget she is a detective. “But an artist in her own right. We met during my secondment to Adelaide. You were… still in London.”

“I see,” she replies archly. This was beginning to sound far too much like a confession.

Until this moment, Phryne would have staked her life on Jack remaining faithful to a commitment they had not yet made when she left him standing on that airfield as she soared out of sight. And in spite of the lovers she took while she had been abroad, she feels rather disheartened to think that he might have done the same.

No one but Jack would have noticed how her weight shifted from her left foot to her right. He pulls her fisted knuckles to his mouth. “No. No, I don’t think you do.”

Looking away from where his lips cradle her fingers, she finally notices the disarray in the otherwise tidy room. Lengths of twine are strewn about their feet. Faded newsprint – _The Advertiser_ some part of her brain catalogs – and brown wrappings paper the floor.

“Jack… What is all this?”

“Something like long lost evidence, I’m afraid,” he sighs, releasing her hand.

“Evidence of what?” she asks with sudden trepidation, picking up a page of the discarded newspaper and scanning it for possible connections to their latest case.

“Of my rather foolish attempt to be a bit more liberal-minded.”

Phryne’s gaze falls upon his writing table, where the slice of deep blue paper lays prone – much like its subject.

“It was your suggestion, after all,” he whispers, watching as her eyes grow wide in disbelief and her jaw, for only the second time in their acquaintance, actually drops.

“Oh Jack.” Her voice sounds faraway with her hand covering her mouth – like she’s caught up in a dream.

Drinking in the eloquence of the charcoal lines, the finesse of the chalk as it casts a glow over the lithe nude figure, her fingers dart forward. She wants to see him through the eyes of this artist, to trace that familiar landscape in a completely unfamiliar way, to imagine herself as the one who rendered the very essence of him.

But the recriminations of a hundred ill-humoured docents ricochet around her head and she stops herself before the oil of her fingertips can smudge it – the fraction of an inch separating her from the page feels as wide as no man’s land.

“I take it no one was ever meant to see this.” Her words are as much a plea as they are an accusation. She turns to face the flesh-and-blood Jack, her eyes burning bright, her whole body quaking.

“Phryne, I—”

But his explanation is utterly lost when she launches herself at him – her hot mouth probing his for the answers she cannot fathom – her hands tearing the shirt from his chest. Her never-ending source of mystery.

 

 

******************************

 

 

“And how many Dianas and Cleopatras bear your likeness?” he teases, thinking of the Sarcelle and wondering just how many pairs of sparkling eyes look down upon the mere mortals of their galleries. This earns him a particularly torturous twist of her hips.

Air whistles between his clenched teeth and his fingers dig hard into the flesh of her thigh. He knows that look – the one that says she wants him hard and fast - but she feels far too good for him to give in just yet. Slipping his hand under her arse to grip the base of his cock, he fights down the urge to come.

“What of your last portrait? Tell me?” he begs, breathless. It is a gamble on his part, her words have the capacity to taunt him as much as her body does but at least he’ll be in with a chance.

“It was raw,” she muses, unfairly stroking her breasts as she recalls the experience. “Primal, even.”

Up her sternum, to the valleys of her clavicle, he traces - overcome with the need to see his hand nestled between hers, dark in contrast to her own ivory skin.

It’s more than he can bear to witness without losing control. His eyes flutter shut. “What I wouldn’t give to see that.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment, Jack.” She laughs, a soft tinkling in the back of her throat that makes his skin ripple. “But it was an abstract. Not even you could have recognized me.”

He surveys her for a moment, wondering if she could truly believe that. His fingertips stretch to brush the curve of her jaw as she undulates slowly above him.

“If you were but a glimmer amidst the firmament, my soul could suss yours from the multitudes.”

Warmth suffuses her bones and softens her eyes. Had she imagined the dour detective of her first meeting could quote poetry like this, with unbridled desire in his eyes, she would have thought herself a fool. Now, she thinks herself one for taking so long to discover it. She lowers herself so that only a breath separates their faces – his head cradled between her forearms, her nipples tight against his chest. “Is that Rilke?”

“No,” he rumbles, all whiskey and honey. “Robinson.”

His confession envelops her as his arms come round to clasp her just as tightly until she is beneath him – his substance weighing far more than the mass of his flesh. And for a moment – in the shadow of the stormy sea that still hangs over his bed looking, as ever, as if it will break over them – they see each other. His soul… and hers.

She huffs in surprise, a small indignant sound, tinny with the emotion. “A poet _and_ a muse, Jack? What else are you hiding?”

Perhaps the Jack of yesteryear would have been fooled, a man less secure in her devotion. But he knows her too well now. It is a feint - an effort to divert, to distract from the ballast.

She is not some glittering star in the sky, winking just out of his reach. She is real… of fire and earth and water and flesh. The truth lies in the driving of her pulse, like monsoon rains, under his lips. It lies in the thunderclouds in her eyes just before they close and she falls, blind and breathless, to his embrace.

She gasps at the heft of his thighs pushing against her hips, the juts of his ankles biting into her shins, as he pins them tightly together. His movements are miniscule, a friction of fractions, and all the more intoxicating for it. His lust focuses, gathering strength over the warm waters of her breath - so that every press of his hips makes her insides swirl, and every cant backward rasps her precious pearl between them.

It is a mercy for his throbbing cock to slow down – to feel her warm velvet muscle soothing every inch of him as he slowly edges her toward oblivion – even if it’s a bit cruel to tease her. Her agonizing moan tickles his teeth as he dips his tongue into her mouth, mimicking the rhythm of his hips - but no guilt lingers. Seducing Phryne Fisher is a victimless crime.

Stilling his hips, he slides two fingers alongside his member to join it in her dripping cunt. Something like pride blooms in his chest to hear her keen – to watch as her eyes roll up in unmitigated pleasure – and he strokes her passage until she is writhing in his grasp.

“I have all manner of impulses you haven’t seen yet, Miss Fisher,” he growls and pushes deep within her, his thumb finding purchase between her slick lips to circle against her with every intention of capsizing her boy in the boat.

She comes without warning – without a sound – as if there is no energy to spare for such a trifle as speech when her body contorts so violently against him, sucking him deeper, fusing with his flesh as he allows himself to shatter with a wail.

 

 

******************************

 

 

“No, keep it inside,” she whispers as he shifts his weight to the bed, her hips still rocking with aftershocks. “Please,” she adds prettily, knowing he cannot resist when asked so nicely.

“My fingers are going to cramp, Phryne,” he teases with no intention whatsoever to remove his hand from her fluttering warmth.

“Mmm. The price you pay for your impulses, Jack,” she hums, twisting to her side and crooking her leg over his hip to grant him better access, her knee nestling against his ribs.

He strokes her idly, without any pursuit in mind beyond enjoying the girlish gasps and giggles that a languid Phryne allows to escape her lips. “I think I can afford it.” To hear her cry, as his fingernail skirts her over-sensitized clitoris, is a price he’ll very gladly pay.

“Good,” she drawls, seizing a handful of his hair to take his earlobe into her teeth. “Because I want to know all about these unfulfilled desires of yours, Jack. Starting with how you came to sit for that portrait.”

He can’t possibly hope to do anything but grin. This is what he loves most about her, he thinks. That he can surprise her – even shock her – without fear of judgment or the reprisal of stony silence.

Perhaps it is her curious nature, the promise of a mystery thrumming deliciously under her skin. Perhaps it is because she has already done every scandalous thing – sometimes twice – and takes great delight in sharing it with him. But mostly, Jack subscribes to the theory that it is because she does not believe in boxing people in.

“But, first,” she interrupts, gently breaking his train of thought by arching deeper onto his hand, “Be a dear and make me come again.”

He fists his free hand into her hair and kisses her, making silent promises with his mouth. In her open-armed acceptance, he has found freedom.

 

 

******************************

 

 

He swirls the newly refreshed glass of whiskey and takes a tentative sip. He feels slightly exposed, laying naked on his sofa, but he didn’t quite trust himself to form words should they find themselves back in his bed.

She takes a drag from the drink herself before setting it on the floor and nestling into his chest. “Well?” she asks expectantly.

“She was only nineteen when I met her. Her father was well known, of course, and the apple hadn’t fallen far from the gum tree.”

The sardonic arch of Phryne’s brow tells him this hardly explains how such a person came to be so well acquainted the South Australian Constabulary.

“The police sketch artist had taken ill and one of the men had thought to solicit the local art school for a substitute. Miss Heysen was keen to practice her portraiture... arrived by tram everyday after her morning classes. A high-spirited girl, rather like Jane. Don’t smile at me like that – I’ll lose my head again.”

Jack licks the taste of her from his lips and knows his mouth is released only because she burns to hear the whole story.

“She was committed, I’ll say that. Even when she wasn’t working with a witness, she had a charcoal in hand and her nose in her sketchbook… Pretending she wasn’t looking as she drew impressions of the officers. But some of her drawings actually led to arrests, so no one protested very much.” He trails fingertips along the length of her arm, hand stilling where her forearm intersects with the curve of her waist. “One night, I found the book lying in the street outside the station. It must have fallen out of her bag.”

“And you looked.”

“I _am_ an investigator by trade, Miss Fisher.”

“How many figures were of you?” She rests her hand lightly on his chest, fingertips knotting into the fine hairs, and waits with bated breath for the words she can already feel like tiny shocks across her skin.

How can she possibly have known, he wonders. He shifts restlessly, staring at the ceiling, and finally turns to face her. “I, uh… More than I had expected to find.”

Amazing. The man had no idea. “Nevermind that I could sharpen knives on those cheekbones.”

“Yes, well… I didn’t know what to think. I…”

“You thought she had a schoolgirl's crush on you?”

“It had occurred to me. But when she turned up looking for it, she didn’t bat an eyelash. Said that her interest was purely artistic and that she wanted to sketch me in earnest.”

“So why not a portrait in your office? That sketch implies an incredibly _earnest_ knowledge of your, ah, bone structure.”

He groans at her taunt, at the way her fingertips crest over his hipbone. Not willing let him off the hook just yet, she tips her head back – just out of his mouth’s reach.

“She made a rather impassioned argument that if she were a _male_ artist, she wouldn’t have to look far to find a suitable nude… about opportunities not afforded to women.”

“Far be it from me to question your contribution to the equal rights of womankind, Jack,” she purrs, her tone pressing him to continue him in utter contradiction to her words.

A sheepish shrug draws his freckled shoulder up to his ear. “What can I say? The idea of you modeling again whet my appetite.”

“I hoped it might lead you to throw some of your caution to the wind,” she admits, “Though the effect seems to have exceeded even _my_ wildest expectations.”

“Your telegram was still burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted to understand…”

How could he explain that he had been chasing a feeling that didn’t precisely belong to him? That what had driven him was the need to see things, just once, from her vantage point before she returned to Melbourne? Even if that meant taking a risk.

“I had already decided that I wasn’t about to let another opportunity pass me by.” His palm is warm against her spine as he caresses up her back to capture her lips in a gentle kiss. “A decision, I might add, that you reaffirm on the regular.”

“I’m just sorry I wasn’t there to see it.”

There is nothing so much like a pout dripping from Phryne’s lips that can make Jack’s curl this seductively.

“If it makes you feel any better, Miss Fisher, I learnt that motoring with you is _not_ the most terrifying way I can spend my leisure time.”

She half-smiles at him from beneath her veil of lashes and stretches her neck in a peace offering to which Jack happily applies himself.

“And I only agreed because she swore she would never sell it. No one else has ever laid eyes on it before today.”

“That is _some_ consolation,” she murmurs.

“Is there something more I can do?" he asks, voice thick with want. "To make it up to you?"

“As a matter of fact there is…” She removes herself from him with a feline quickness, his body suddenly taut and cold with the loss of her. 

“...Pose for me, Jack.”

“Phryne—“

“Just lie back... like you did for her.”

He narrows his eyes at her in reprove but knows he will do anything she asks of him.

“Please, Jack?”

He feels his limbs melt back into the cushions almost at once, his body attempting to recall the reclining posture of the sketch – as if his brain has absolutely no say in the matter. Terribly unfair, the effect those words have upon him.

“Don’t move.”

Phryne darts out of the room only to reappear again at his feet, the dark blue paper placed delicately against a nearby lamp. She goes about the business of arranging his limbs, stretching his right arm over and above his head until the lines of his ribs are evident, nudging his left elbow until it is at right angles to his torso, and lifting his head so his snub-tipped nose points upward… until he approximates the image of his own likeness – with one rather delectable difference.

“Eyes closed now,” she clucks, cheekily brushing the back of her hand against his erection while she tilts his hips just so.

He groans his complaint, doing his best to remain still. “That’s it, just try to relax,” she murmurs, recalling how she had felt, cold and exposed in an artist’s studio for the first time, trying to earn a few francs to put bread in her belly as she fought to put the war behind her.

This is more intimate, she realizes. She gave the artists her body to paint or sculpt – but nothing more unless she desired it. Jack, lying before her, hides nothing. She presses soft lips to his and combs his forelock off his head.

He feels her step backward and hears her breathe softly – an outtake of breath that makes a beautiful little sound that he stores away in his heart. “Jack.”

Phryne’s eyes flit between the pictures in front of her – appraising with a critic’s eye, but also a lover’s. His face is perhaps not as smooth – the lines of his throat etched a little deeper. His arms are less wiry, more muscled... and she grins to herself, her mind slipping to just how often she finds herself held up in the air by that deceivingly lithe frame. The jut of his ribs are not as pronounced, though his belly is still remarkably taut. And yet the aura is the same. This is Jack – her Jack. As much hers then as he is now. The flutter this brings to the cave of her chest nearly overcomes her.

He lies quietly, though his mind threatens to drown. Flooded with the sensations of the room – the cool air playing on his heated skin, his fingers going numb as the blood siphons away to his groin, the pounding of his heartbeat ringing in his ears – he feels himself distilling under her gaze. As if her gaze had the power to separate him into his fundamental elements.

When she touches him, just a press of her fingers to his outer thigh, he nearly faints.

“Shhh,” she whispers, continuing the trail up along the girth of his thigh to the round of his hip – where her fingertips find the small scar that the charred willow was too clumsy to capture. She feels the slickness release between her legs as she takes in the beauty of him – wounds and all.

Her touch is measured, her expression, enthralled. She is copying the lines of Heysen’s charcoal vines with her fingers – an exquisite forgery on a canvas of flesh. By the time she reaches the curve of his jaw, he stares at her openly – watching as her eyes match her strokes to the picture.

Jack can barely find the space in his chest to breathe as she works her way around his body with both hands, painting him with her touch. He does not dare move and break the spell. But a gasp clears the air when she brushes the pads of her thumbs over his nipples, drags the heel of her hand along his breastbone, carves the hollow of his arms with her knuckles.

The backdraft of air finally released, his breath grows ragged and wild as she dips a finger into his navel and lowers her face to brush kisses where the light hits his skin. He whimpers as her lips find the sensitive inner skin of his biceps, his throat, his stomach –  and his nerves catch fire from the feathery drag of her hair.

Now, when she looks, Jack resembles nothing of the peaceful figure in the portrait. His face is flushed and contorted with desire – eyes, deep pools of black. His body is restless and squirms beneath her, even as he grits his teeth with the effort to remain steady.

This what she loves most about him, she thinks. That he will come so completely undone for her.  She watches as he tries to marshal his control – to give her what he thinks she wants – as the passion swells within him.

Perhaps he no longer has the energy to fight it – lamenting the years of his life squandered in the name of propriety. Perhaps he is slowly coming to accept the darker parts of himself – understanding that sex is a continuum, fluid rather than static. But mostly, she believes that he knows what they share is precious – and that the freedom in which they express their love is entirely up to them.

When she lowers herself between his thighs, he begs for her mouth – his cock straining desperately hard against her. She nuzzles into the nest of chestnut curls and sighs happily.

“Phryne,” he moans, the relentless vibration of her humming is turning him to pudding. He doesn’t mind, but he can’t escape the feeling he is missing something… until he feels a tickle against his knee. He lifts his head up. “Are you—“

“Yes Jack?” she asks far too innocently, tonguing his slit and causing him to see stars. She has given herself away - she hoped to be able to pleasure him for longer, but she is too aroused to keep her hands from herself. Alas, it is his biggest weakness.

“Christ! Are you touching yourself?” The words, as they escape his lips make his cock even harder than the way she smiles around it.

She swallows theatrically, knowing his eyes are on her, and massages him down the length of her throat. When his head drops back to the couch, with a groan, she thrusts her slick fingers into his mouth to confirm his suspicion.

“Oh yes, Jack,” she confesses without contrition, taking him back between her lips as his whole body goes rigid. The force of his teeth on her fingers sends her over the edge as she thrusts herself against the heel of her other hand.

 

 

******************************

 

 

“Eureka,” she says triumphantly – still giddy with the force of her orgasm. Phryne fishes a pocket mirror from her handbag and holds it up to his face. “What do you think of your latest portrait, Jack?”

A lop-sided grin meets his eyes, half-closed with the pull of post-coital somnolence, as waves of untidy curls crash over his unfurrowed brow.

“Your brushwork is without equal, Miss Fisher.”

Their eyes meet – and for a moment, the earth stills – until they dip their heads in a lush, lazy kiss.

“Perhaps you might be prevailed upon to allow Miss Heysen to sell that sketch after all, Jack? I know a rather wealthy woman who knows how to appreciate a work of art.”

“I don’t know about that,” he says dryly. “I wouldn’t want it falling into the wrong hands.”

His cheeky smile is met with an unexpectedly heartfelt expression.

“Oh. I’m quite certain she would cherish it for a lifetime.” She holds her breath, fully aware that her vow transcends page and char. “What do you think?”

Jack considers what he told her about sitting for the portrait – how her words had given him the incentive he had needed to take the risk – and how since their acquaintance, she has nudged him beyond the false boundaries he had erected to protect himself. He considers that, had she doused that one last candle so long ago, he might have never dreamed to have a hope of being with her.

He drinks her in – all fresh-faced and glowing, her irises deepened to indigo – and realizes just how much he is willing to risk for it to be true.

“I think I can cope with that.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Lovelies, without further ado, I give you – in charcoal and white chalk on blue paper – [Male Nude in Moonlight](http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/381.2003/) by Nora Heysen
> 
> Nora Heysen was an absolutely brilliant Australian artist - the first woman to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture and a Captain in the Australian forces as a war artist during WWII. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that she sketched for the South Australian Constabulary, but I had to put her in Jack’s path somehow.
> 
> This particular sketch is undated, and though evidence suggests that it was created after her return from WWII, the fact that it has no date allows me to pretend with abandon. Because, let’s face it… that is Jack effing Robinson in my headcanon and forever will be.
> 
> In aforementioned headcanon, Phryne – true to her word – kept the sketch (and Jack) all of her life, donating it back to the artist in her will. It was bequeathed to the museum by Nora Heysen in 2003, presumably as part of her estate.
> 
> I also imagined Nora to be a bit of a spit-fire when it came to women’s rights – especially after I came across this [appallingly telling article.](http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/55464841)
> 
> Phryne’s friend in London is the inimitable British post-impressionist, Duncan Grant - who knew a little something about male nudes ;)


End file.
